Senate Passes Scaled-Back Copyright Measure (Ad Editing OK, P2P Win)

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Senate has voted to outlaw several favorite techniques of people who illegally copy and distribute movies, but has dropped other measures that could have led to jail time for Internet song-swappers.

People who secretly videotape movies when they are shown in theaters could go to prison for up to three years under the measure, which passed the Senate on Saturday.

Hackers and industry insiders who distribute music, movies or other copyrighted works before their official release date also face stiffened penalties under the bill.

snip......

Most elements of the bill have already passed the House of Representatives but will need to be approved by the House again in December to iron out minor differences.

Left out were several more controversial measures that would criminalize the actions of millions of U.S. Internet users who copy music and movies for free over "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa.

snip........

The bill also shields "family friendly" services like ClearPlay that strip violent or sexually explicit scenes from movies. Hollywood groups say such services violate their copyrighted works by altering them without permission.

A section that would have made it illegal to edit out commercials was removed.

MORE...............

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=politicsNews&storyID=6887328

[Endangered Specie]

1. In that case, first ones to go to jail = Congressmans kids...

Odds are 75% of them download.

[mdhunter]

2. Pretty good news, all in all, considering what might have been (nt)

[Khephra]

3. Agreed

I know there's a lot of people down on TV here at DU, but no one can say that I'm not informed. When I have downtime--and everybody needs downtime--I like watching a few shows. The thing I like best is that I can now narrowcast my programing and record what I want for when I have the freetime to watch. And now with the harddrive recorders you can easily skip ads. About half the problem with TV is the freeping commercials. I think it's been about 6 months since I've had to watch one--excepting the times I've watched news live, of course. I don't know what I would have done if they'd started outlawing ad skipping.

Man, Maxheadroom was so ahead of its time.

[rukkyg]

4. I would have skipped them anyway. n/t

[Khephra]

5. Yeah, I'm with you

I would have found some way, even if I had to use old, slow refurbished equipment to do it.

Getting rid of commercials from my life has been one of the few good things to happen to me recently. I'm never going back if I can help it.

[sendero]

6. One of the best $13....

... a month I've ever spent is for Tivo. I really can hardly stand to watch TV without it.

I don't watch a lot of sports, but I can actually ENJOY a football game when I can skip over the commericals, the pointless banter and other downtime and just watch play after play.

They'll have to pry my Tivo remote from my cold dead hands :)

[BlueEyedSon]

7. LOL... those DAMN DIRTY APES!

[Khephra]

8. I saw a CNN story a few days ago

that reported that Tivo was going to prevent commercial skipping on their own. This was before this bill's vote, so I don't know if they're still planning on changing or not. You might want to look into that.

I use the HD on my panasonic DVD recorder. I record what I want to watch and then cut out ads on my own using high-speed play. The show goes by so fast that I don't spoil anything and after getting a bit of practice you start learning when the breaks are placed which makes it even simpler to do. Not as easy as I hear Tivo is, but at least no one can take away the features from my recorder.

[sendero]

9. My understanding...

... is this. They will not exactly stop you from skipping commercials. What they will do is superimpose a still ad on top of the fast-forwarding video. To skip commercials effectively, you do have to watch. This doesn't bother me, typical commercial breaks will still last 4-7 seconds instead of 2-4 minutes.

Tivo can't be stupid. The commercial-skipping ability is half of their value. If they take that out, they will lose half their market IMHO.